Podcast: Understanding the links between sex/gender and autism

The male predominance in the prevalence of autism has many inter-linked implications for understanding the emergence and development of autism. Earlier this month, Molecular Autismpublished the first articles in a thematic series on understanding autism in the light of sex/gender.

Guest edited by Dr Meng-Chuan Lai, the series aims to jointly disentangle the complex relationships between sex/gender differences and autism by bringing together cutting-edge research from a variety of disciplines.

In these podcasts, I speak to the some of the researchers who contributed their exciting findings to the series.

Christine Wu Nordahl

Christine Wu Nordahl

“The entire field of medicine is moving towards this notion of individualized medicine, and understanding certain gender differences and how they influence diagnosis and treatment can only move us towards this goal of really treating each individual based on their symptoms and biology.”

Valerie Hu

Valerie Hu

“This new study suggests another mechanism for the higher autism susceptibility in males that is linked to RORA deficiency…It’s just one aspect to personalized medicine, where one takes into account the genetics and the underlying biology within a given individual; in this case we’re adding sex as part of the underlying biology.”

Stephan Sanders and Jake Gockley

Stephan Sanders

“There are some traits which we expect to be more common in males, for example prostate cancer, and there are others we expect to be more common in females like breast cancer. But to see something which is a behavioral trait, this 4:1 sex bias is a really striking finding.”

– Stephan Sanders, University of California, USA

Jake Gockley

“Understanding sexual dimorphism in the brain and how genetic risk factors could potentially confer autism risk in a sex-specific manner is vital in treating autism in its entirety, and ensuring that specific subsets aren’t set at a disadvantage.”

Donna Werling

Donna Werling

“Autism is such a heterogeneous condition, it has a spectrum-like presentation, there are up to 1000 genes involved in risk, and yet the male bias in autism is so persistent… harnessing the component of sex differential biology involved in risk could be useful in a wide range of patients across that heterogeneous spectrum.”

Liz completed an MSci in Biology at Imperial College London, before joining BioMed Central in 2010. Now, as an Associate Publisher in the Biological Sciences team, she is responsible for the development of a portfolio of neuroscience, biotechnology and cell biology journals.